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Liverpool English

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Liverpool English ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE IPA Liverpool English Kevin Watson Department of Linguistics and English Language Lancaster University [email protected] Liverpool English (LE) is the variety of English spoken in Liverpool and much of the surrounding county of Merseyside, in the north-west of England. After London, the north- west of England is the most densely populated of all regions in England and Wales, with the population of Liverpool standing at around 450,000. LE itself is said to have developed in the middle of the 19th century, after rapid immigration from Ireland during the Irish potato famines of 1845–1847 (see Knowles 1973). Arguably as a result of this immigration, as we will see, there are some similarities between LE’s phonological system and those of Irish Englishes. Of course, as we might expect, the phonological system of LE maintains its connection with other northern Englishes, too. There is a greater amount of previous work on LE than on many other accents of British English, particularly other varieties of the north-west of the country. The earliest systematic study of LE, Knowles (1973), remains the seminal work and is where the widest range of phonological features is considered. Later work, including De Lyon (1981), Honeybone (2001), Sangster (2001) and Watson (2006, 2007), has tended to restrict its focus to a smaller number of variables which are amongst the variety’s most characteristic features. This article bases most of its descriptive detail on data gathered during fieldwork carried out by the author (see Watson 2007), but at times information is gleaned from elsewhere (most notably Knowles’ early work) to provide comparison. The transcription of the reading passage is based on the speech of a 21-year-old working- class female speaker who was born in the district of Netherton, in the north of Liverpool, and has always lived there. She self-identifies as having a ‘broad’ Liverpool accent, although the difficulty in remaining objective about such labels should be acknowledged. There is considerable phonetic variation in LE according to age, gender and socioeconomic class, although this is an area where modern research is lacking. In what follows, where the speaker produces some phonetic feature which is known to be atypical of LE or where a feature varies according to some sociolinguistic parameter, this will be pointed out. Consonants Whilst the consonant system of LE is phonologically identical to most other varieties of English English, there is much allophonic variability. Of course, this is to be expected in every variety, but as we will see, the realisational potential of certain LE phonemes is much greater than elsewhere. Journal of the International Phonetic Association (2007) 37/3 C International Phonetic Association doi:10.1017/S0025100307003180 Printed in the United Kingdom 352 Journal of the International Phonetic Association: Illustrations of the IPA Labio- Post- Bilabial dental Dental Alveolar alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Plosive pb td kg Affricate tS dZ Nasal m n N Fricative fv TD sz SZ h Approximant r j w Lateral l approximant Dental fricatives /T, D/ are often realised as dental stops [t,1 d1] both word-initially, medially and finally, although dental fricatives are also found. This is arguably a feature which has been innovated into LE from varieties of Irish (Honeybone 2004). It has recently been suggested that TH-fronting, the process by which /T, D/ are realised as labiodental fricatives [f, v] and which is frequent in many other British varieties (e.g. Milton Keynes, Reading, Hull (Williams & Kerswill 1999), Newcastle (Watt & Milroy 1999)), is infrequent in LE (Watson 2005). The speaker can be heard using both standard fricative variants ([T]innorth,[D]in other) and the more localised dental stop ([d1]inthen). She does not use a labiodental variant. Post-vocalic /r/ is absent in LE, so that words like car, farm, park are r-less. In pre- vocalic and intervocalic positions, /r/ is typically realised as [®]or[|]. The tap is common in intervocalic position (e.g. mi[|]or, ve[|]y) but can also occur when /r/ follows an onset obstruent (e.g. st[|]ip, b[|]eath, f[|]ee). The speaker’svariety is somewhat atypical of basilectal Liverpool English in this respect, as she uses the standard variant [®] in all positions (e.g. ag[®]eed, a[®]ound, st[®]onger). The tapped realisation of /r/ is not categorically absent from her repertoire, however, as she uses [|] as the linking /r/instronger[|] of the two.The labiodental variant, [√], is not a feature of LE, despite it spreading in other accents of British English (Foulkes & Docherty 2000). LE is similar to other accents in the north of England in that the /g/inng clusters is maintained. For example, the speaker realises along as [´lÅNg]. In the -ing morpheme, forms with the velar nasal and plosive are found, as in singing [sINgINg], but a realisation of [´n] is also likely (e.g. sing[´n], walk[´n]). The speaker uses [´n]forthe-ing of making. Another similarity between LE and elsewhere is the dropping of /h/, most often in high frequency grammatical words (e.g. the speaker’s realisation of him, who, his). H-dropping is not categorical, however, as the speaker’s maintenance of [h]inmore he blew testifies. /h/is frequently maintained in lexical words (e.g. as it is in the speaker’s hard). It is in the system of plosives where the widest range of phonetic variation is attested. As in other varieties of English, voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ are aspirated in word-initial position, except when following syllable initial /s/. /p, t, k/ can also be aspirated in word-final and utterance-final positions (Knowles 1973, Watson 2007). The voiceless stops are frequently realised with noticeable preaspiration utterance-finally, which might manifest itself either as a period of glottal noise or as oral frication which is produced homorganically to the stop. As is the case in Newcastle (see e.g. Docherty & Foulkes 1999), preaspiration in Liverpool English is primarily the domain of female speakers (Watson 2007). As well as these aspirated and preaspirated variants, there is an additional range of plosive realisations which are more or less unique to Liverpool. Most of these realisations can be described as processes of LENITION – a term frequently used to group together a series of phonological weakenings which turn underlying plosives into affricates and fricatives (see e.g. Lass 1984; Harris 1990, 1994; Honeybone 2002). Indeed, plosive lenition is arguably one of the most characteristic features of Liverpool English, and one which forms a major part of the variety’s stereotype. Kevin Watson: Liverpool English 353 For /t/, affrication is common word-initially, whilst spirantisation is common in intervocalic and word-final positions. The speaker uses an affricated /t/ in word-initial position in two (see figure 1). She spirantises /t/ as well, but there are a limited number of potential candidates in the reading passage due to phonological environment restrictions. The presence of sibilant fricatives for /t/ does not lead to the loss of phonological contrast with /s/. Honeybone (2001) transcribes lenited /t/as[D] which, following Pandeli et al. (1997), implies a fricative with a flat cross-sectional tongue shape (signaled by [T]) at a precisely alveolar place of articulation (signaled by the double-underscore diacritic which is adapted from the ‘extended IPA’ used in the transcription of disordered speech). There are durational differences, too, with a longer phonetic fricative for /s/ than for /t/ (Sangster 2001). Recent work has suggested that there is a wide range of possibilities of ‘stopless /t/’, which can all be described as fricatives, but which are all articulated with varying degrees of approximation (Watson 2007). Rather than these realisations being the result of articulatory undershoot, there is evidence that fine-grained phonetic differences provide indexical information in LE, as they have been found to do elsewhere (see e.g. Docherty & Foulkes 1999 for Newcastle, and Jones & Llamas 2003 for Middlesbrough). Thus, these realisations represent the learned articulatory behaviour of the speakers (Docherty & Foulkes 2000, Foulkes & Docherty 2006). For example, LE /t/ for male speakers is often realised as the [T] described above, but for female /t/ the relationship between the oral and glottal gesture is more variable, so that realisations such as [hsh] are common. An example of a preaspirated, postaspirated fricative /t/ is provided in figure 2. Space restrictions inhibit detailed discussion of these realisations in this illustration, but see Watson (forthcoming) for a more detailed examination. As well as realising /t/ as an oral fricative, it can also be debuccalised to [h]. In older speakers, this occurs only in pre-pausal position in a small set of high frequency monosyllabic (pseudo)function words with short vowels (e.g. it [Ih], what [wÅh], not [nÅh], that [d1ah], lot [lÅh]). For younger speakers, the realisation of /t/as[h] can also occur in polysyllabic words which end in an unstressed syllable (e.g. market [ma…xIh], maggot [magIh], aggregate [ag|IgIh]). As the debuccalisation of /t/ does not occur in any other variety of north-western English, it has been suggested that the extension of the process to polysyllabic words is an innovation which represents phonological divergence from supralocal norms (Watson 2006, 2007). Because pre-pausality is a conditioning environment for the realisation of /t/as[h], there are no potential candidates in the reading passage. Connected to the realisation of /t/ as [h], in terms of the environments in which it occurs, is the realisation of /t/ as a rhotic (typically [®] but also [|]). /t/ → [®]and/t/ → [h] can occur in a similar sets of monosyllabic words, but whereas pre-pausality is necessary for the realisation as [h], the conditioning factor for [®] is the presence of a following vowel (e.g.
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